Uniiverse connects Internet users to buy, share and sell in person

The hyper-connected world the Internet fosters can actually be profoundly isolating, as 140-character messages supplant getting acquainted IRL, or in real life. Craig Follett aims to change that with his Toronto-based startup Uniiverse Collaborative Lifestyle Inc. The online marketplace launched in February is part of a growing “sharing economy” and lets users connect online to make plans to meet offline to share or sell their belongings, time, expertise or space. It relies on profiles from social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to create trust among users, but the Uniiverse chief executive and chairman says the intention is to bring people face to face with each other. He and co-founders Ben Raffi and Adam Meghji quit jobs in consulting and software last June to design the online platform and raise $750,000 in a seed round of financing. The site attracted 40,000 unique visitors in its first month, Mr. Follett says, with users posting everything from babysitting and projector rentals to a how-to session on designing your name in borax crystals. In an edited transcript of his conversation with the Financial Post‘s Christine Dobby, Mr. Follett explains how Uniiverse plans to capitalize on people’s desire to meet in person and share everything from the mundane to the unique.

QThere are a lot of sharing economy-type websites out there. What’s different about yours?

A Uniiverse is not anonymous; you need to connect in with a social network. So there’s a picture, a name, a trail of what’s going on. After an experience, you leave a rating and review and you can also see what this person is doing in other aspects of their life. Because we build on top of a social network, you can see social proximity. So you could see that they go running every week with one of your friends or one of your friend’s friends and that brings them one step closer to being someone you can trust. You can also see what they’re up to across different categories. So maybe they rented a drill or a kayak and they returned it successfully and got a good review. All that in one word, I would say, is trust. That’s really what we’re after. To enable the “collaborative consumption” or “sharing economy” in a meaningful way, you have to create the trust layer and that’s what we’re building.

QAnd you’re confident people will buy into that?

A We’ve already seen it picking up — people sharing items and experiences, meeting up with each other in real life. I think there’s an innate desire to share and we just need to create the right tools for people to feel comfortable doing that again. Typically this is with people who are near you and it could even be your neighbours. So it’s resurrecting all those old behaviours and enabling them again.

Take something like a drill that’s only used for a very small percentage of the time. You probably only need a couple of drills in each condo building and everyone can share them. So there are environmental and social benefits. You don’t need to produce or dispose of that many drills and you will also be interacting with your neighbours.

There’s a shift in the younger, upcoming generations, they’re going to want to move toward this. It’s more about having access to things, rather than owning them.

QI didn’t notice any ads on the site. Is your business model entirely commission-based?

A It’s free to post and the buyer pays a small fee at the time of the booking. There are no ads because it’s contrary to our vision, which is about people interacting with other people, not about businesses. Ads would distract from our primary revenue stream of the commission. We actually mean it when we say we don’t plan on putting any ads on the site ever. We have some other future revenue streams planned, which we don’t want to expose for competitive reasons, but we have ideas to make advertising more relevant for both the consumer and the advertiser and it won’t take the form of display ads on the site. We also plan on doing another round of funding in 2012 so we can scale the business. Right now we’re getting things set up and proving the business model. We already have revenue coming in so it’s just going to be a matter of scaling it.

QYour target cities are Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco and Boston. How are you marketing to these cities specifically?

A We have an ambassador program with 70 volunteer interns signed up – some have started, some are starting in the summer. It’s focused on social media and street and guerilla marketing. It’s a great opportunity for people to work with a startup and gain marketing experience. We’re pretty up front about the fact it’s unpaid and that’s why a lot of the time it’s more of an extra-curricular or part-time thing people do. We’ve also produced about 40 videos to target specific interests. For example our “foodie” page is a landing page for people who love food and includes a video aimed at that group.

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